Over £1m of Right To Buy cash to support purchase of new affordable homes

Published on Friday, August 24, 2018

PLANS to use over £1milllion of Right To Buy cash to help provide more affordable homes for rent have been announced by Leicester City Council.

The city council will provide £1,082,744 of funding to the Riverside Group Ltd to support its purchase of 46 new affordable homes in Beaumont Leys.

Whenever a home is sold under Right To Buy, the proceeds of the sale must be used as specified by the government. Only some of the proceeds can be used to support the supply of new affordable homes for rent.

The Riverside Group – one of the leading registered providers of social housing in the UK – has confirmed that the council will be able to nominate people from its housing register for the new homes. The Riverside Group will meet all costs for maintaining the properties.

The city council struck a similar deal with Clarion Housing Association earlier this summer, providing almost £580,000 of Right To Buy funding to help it buy 22 new affordable rental properties in East Hamilton.

City Mayor Peter Soulsby said: “By providing Right To Buy funding to the Riverside Group in this way, we can help ensure that dozens of new homes, including much-needed bungalow accommodation, are available at affordable rents as part of a new housing development in Beaumont Leys.”

“There is no doubt that the Right To Buy scheme has hit the supply of council housing and contributed to the shortage of social housing we now have. We’re losing homes much faster than they are being built and it’s time Right To Buy was abandoned.

“Councils can’t use all of the money raised through the sale of properties sold under the scheme, and can usually only use it to fund up to 30% of the cost of new affordable homes. It is therefore vital that proceeds are carefully reinvested to help ensure that the city can continue to provide affordable homes for rent. This deal provides an ideal opportunity to do that.”

The council also recently announced plans to set up its own housing company and invest around £50milllon in building 300 new homes over the next three years.

There are currently over 6,000 households on the council’s housing register seeking affordable homes for rent.